The past two months have seen a flood of senior World Bank management leaving the institution. Most senior amongst them was managing director Shengman Zhang, the only non-northern senior staff member at the Bank, who is off to Citibank, the world’s biggest private financial services group. Zhang will be joined at Citibank by past president James Wolfensohn. Also reported on their way out the door are heavyweights Ian Johnson, vice president for environmentally and socially sustainable development; Geoffrey Lamb, vice president for concessional finance and global partnerships; Jemal-ud-din Kassum, vice president for East Asia and the Pacific; and Maarten de Jong, director of the department for institutional integrity.

Bank staff expressed shock and dismay that they were disinvited from high-level meetings

Relations between Bank staff and management are reportedly at an all-time low. A letter from the chair of the Bank’s staff association expressed “shock and dismay” that they were “disinvited” from two high-level meetings which they had regularly attended under past president James Wolfensohn.